When the Night Has Come
by DCFanatic4life
Summary: She hates when he leaves in the morning, but if she pretends she only hates it some of the time, maybe it won't hurt so much...Chris/Steph...
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: The characters and real people do not belong to me. The characters belong to the WWE and the real people own themselves. This is rated M because it's got swearing and graphic situations, if you're underage, mosey along now...

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**A/N: I don't know what's with me lately, I guess the writing bug has hit! Anyways, this is a new one from me again. It's going to probably be a 2-shot, more than likely, like I'm 99 percent sure it'll be a 2-shot unless someone convinces me otherwise. I'll probably finish up the second chapter this week.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy the latest from me and please, please, please leave me a review because they're so pretty and shiny and I love them, even if they're not nice, that's fine too, I just hope you like this, let me know! :)

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She hated it sometimes when he left.

She actually hated it all the time but if she pretended like it was only some of the time then somehow, it made things easier. But there was nothing she could do so she pretended to tolerate it, maybe she even pretended to like it. No, she never pretended to like it when he left. In fact, she wouldn't even act like she was awake when he left. He probably thought she wasn't a morning person when she actually was. She just pretended not to wake up so he would leave without saying something that would leave her hanging for another day.

She always promised herself that every time they had sex together it would be the last time. By the time the morning came, she'd be so resolved that she would delete his number from her cell phone and pretend like he never existed. By the afternoon, he'd call her and she'd recognize the phone number and she couldn't help but answer because she couldn't help but care about him and then the process would start itself over, like rain. At least in this cycle she cherished every time they slept together because she always feared it would be their last.

They had lives outside these walls, believe or not, lives that didn't include each other. She often hoped that one day she'd wake up and have a new life, one where they could be together, but it was just never meant to be that way and the sooner she accepted it maybe she could make the last time _truly_ the last time. He had a family that he obviously cared about. Some nights she'd listen to him talk about some great new achievement his kids had accomplished. He'd get this look of pride on his face as he spoke of them.

Somehow, when they were in a room alone, it was like whatever was out there didn't touch them in the same way. If she saw his children with him at a show or some event, she'd feel a panging in her heart like a soft stick against a metal drum. She'd drop her eyes and try not to look up again until it was safe. Yet, when they were in a room together, just the two of them, the night pulsing around them, she could picture these kids being her step-kids, having fun with her, hugging her, loving her like a second mother. She could be good to them.

But nothing lasted outside this room and maybe that's why she held on so much and pretended that she only hated it sometimes when he left. He didn't know she loved him. That would be too much. Why do people even start affairs if the chances of forever are so slim? Yes, yes, most marriages end up in divorce anyways, but usually it's the affair that is the catalyst and then the adulterer realizes their mistake and is repulsed by the person they'd had the affair with. She knew her time was coming.

She was going to wake up one day and he was going to look at her and be disgusted by her. She tried steeling herself for that day, but she knew that it would come, fast and furious, and would take her by surprise. So she didn't tell him she loved him because that would be revealing too much and she didn't want to appear to be the weak one. She was supposed to be strong and brave. He would tell her that sometimes, talk about how strong she was and how tough she was, but in the moments when he left, she never felt strong or tough.

She'd lay there on her stomach or on her side, facing away from him. If she was laying on him while they slept and he woke up, he'd gently push himself out from under her. She'd pretend to roll over, sigh a little then she'd turn away from him so her eyes wouldn't be tempted to open and watch him go through the motions of leaving her. She never wanted to see his routine. She didn't know if he gathered his clothes first and then dressed or if he picked up each item of clothing and put them on one by one as he scavenged for him. Her eyes were screwed too tight to make anything out.

Then he'd climb on the bed and lay there for a minute and she wondered what he'd do for that minute. She never dared move so as to not break the delicate balance they had. He'd run his finger up and down her spine a few times, his touch lingering like a bead of sweat slowly moving down her back. She'd never asked if that was meant to wake her up, but she would just lie there as his index finger brushed against her spine.

Then he'd lean forward and kiss her shoulder, like a thank you for the evening. How was that small kiss supposed to sustain her through the day, she wondered. And when the last time came, when he kisses her on the shoulder for that one final time, how in God's name is that supposed to get her through a lifetime? It won't and she knows it and she's afraid that she'll not have anything once he's gone. Sure, she'll have her husband and her children, but what is living when you're not living the life you feel you were supposed to live?

They pretend when they're at the show, barely interact at all, very professional. They're afraid if they show the tiniest amount of emotion everyone will know. It's paranoia setting in. The taxing nature of an affair following them around. That's another thing they'll have to face. When does it get too hard? Do you just quit? She won't leave him, she knows it. She's tried, Lord how she's tried, but she can't and she's accepted this.

They never talk about them and what they're doing, not really. They just…_do_. They just are with each other and that's enough, it has to be enough. They'll talk of course, about their lives, about work, but never about them. Too complicated; they are simply too complicated for mere words to describe. They're more than words and words would only complicate things and muddle them into a swampy mess. So their words were surface words only, never meant to dig deeper.

The nights belong to them. Her husband doesn't travel with her and her kids are often with him since he'll be at home until tomorrow when she'll go home and lather, rinse, repeat this boring life she leads. But on the nights she's away, when she's alone, he's there and the night is theirs and theirs alone. There are no worries beyond the hotel walls, no concerns, no hurries, just them and they talk through their touches and that's their deeper.

It's in the way he undresses her, so slowly that it's almost torturous. He unbuttons one button at a time and then kisses the skin he's exposing. Sometimes his tongue will dart out and taste her skin and she's already sweating because he's there and he's with her and the heat is too much and he's licking at her skin and his tongue is hot and warm and sticky, but not in the bad way, in the best way. If she's wearing a skirt, his hand flirts with the edge. Her thighs are sensitive and he brushes his fingers gently back and forth on her skin, causing the small hairs to stand up at attention, ready for more touching.

Then her skirt bunches up, but he pulls away before he goes further and unzips it, pulling it off as she's lying there in her bra. It's the way he looks at her when she's almost naked, but not quite. There's a look there, hunger, lust, whatever you want to call it, but when he looks at her like that, it's rapturous. As long as he can stare at her in that way, she stares at him and it's like some weird observation gallery, him watching her, her watching him and it only lasts a moment, but there's a mutual admiration.

Their words are felt in the way that he runs his hands over her naked body and the way her legs part slightly to let him at her. Their bodies speak when his fingers slip inside her and her body arches up into her. They're not silent during sex, there are always mutters and groans and light breaths filled with nonsensical syllables of passion and lust, but they don't need the real words. She doesn't need to tell him where to touch, he already knows and he's delving in there, his fingers touching her where she needs to be touched and they go deeper until she's completely satisfied and then he stills and hovers over her and still no words, but intimacy, so much intimacy that the air feels thick with the perfume of foreplay and it's almost like she pictured exotic, far-off places to be in her mind, the air rich with perfumed, warm, musky scents.

His need permeates the air of sex and it mixes with the faintest smell of his cologne. If she could wrap them in a cloud of perfume and cologne and sex, she would, creating a cocoon impenetrable by the rest of the world. He needs no words either because her hand reaches for him and his fingers are in her and her fingers are _on_ him and their lips touch and words pass in their breathing. His thoughts transfer to her via tongue on tongue and conversation is limited to their tangling of limbs and sweat and sex flowing between them.

When they're finally connected, words become simply a moot idea. He goes gentle because he wants to prolong it. She doesn't know why, doesn't ask. She is willing to take it however he wants to give it, but this is the way he likes it and who is she to argue? She doesn't. She lets him dictate the pace, always, like he's a timid gazelle and the slightest movement from her will scare him away. She just clutches at him, pushes up against him or on some occasions, pushes _down_ against him, and moans her feelings as he buries his face in her neck.

He nibbles at her skin, piercing words into her body. They're hot and sticky and she loves him so much in that moment and she hopes that there's some way that he knows. Maybe since they're so connected at that moment his mind can read hers. Maybe when he touches her forehead with his and looks in her eyes, imploring her to finish with him so they can be together in that way as well he can hear her thoughts, read the words of her mind on the pools of gray she calls eyes and maybe if she looked she could see the words in the clear blue pools of his eyes, but it's too intense and she never thinks to look as he's grinding his pelvis into hers.

Afterwards the words still don't come except in gasps of air. They usually lay there until the urge rises in them again and maybe this time she initiates the action, kneeling between his legs and cleaning him off and getting him ready again. They're so far beyond the words, but yet, the words she longs to say, the words she wants to say can never burst free, not even in those most intimate of moments because it's wrong and he probably doesn't love her back and she can't break up a marriage any more than she already has. So they repeat what just happened again to even more satisfaction and then maybe sleep and she waits in a hazy state until the weight of the bed shifts and she can feel that index finger brushing down her spine.

Maybe one day the finger won't be there and she can't help but wonder if that day will mean he's not leaving or if he's already left and she's finally put a stop to whatever this is. She's mute when she's around him because she hates when he leaves, but if she tells him, maybe he'll leave and never come back and the possibility of that is terrifying. She wants the control in that area. If she cannot have control in any area of this fucked up situation, she wants the power to be the one to leave first. It's all she'll have because she's so sure she loves him without reciprocation.

Then one night he didn't show up and she's sitting there and wondering what happened and if she did something wrong or if he just decided he didn't care anymore. She worries and frets and it's sad and pathetic and she knows it and she hates…someone, something, anything, anyone for it because she's so damn insecure and how can affairs make you paranoid _and_ insecure and she hates it, hates everything about it and this is _it_, she decides, this has to be _it_, because she can't take it anymore and she resolves herself not to take him in anymore except she's weak and she knows she'll take him back because she always does.

Take him back? Like they're actually dating or something and this situation is so wrong, but she can't let go right now though he doesn't care. She has things to go back to, people to go back to her, her husband, children, the whole like, but he was keeping her alive in ways her family couldn't. She couldn't explain it, but she loved him and she had never felt love quite like he supplied her. It wasn't this all-encompassing-let-me-write-about-how-it's-so-wrong-to-be-in-a-relationship-with-a-married-man-when-I-love-him-and-he-probably-doesn't-love-me-and-it's-all-a-crazy-bullshit-story or whatever.

And there's a knock and it's him and she knows and she gets up and she walks to the door because she's going to tell him off (her brain tells her, heart's still undecided), but he's pounding now and she has to pull the door open so he doesn't wake everyone in the building and there he is and he looks disheveled and she wonders if maybe he's been mugged and she worries, but then it's dumb, he'd kick someone's ass in a second so it must be something else.

"Chris?" she asks because this _is_ the time for words.

"Steph, I need to talk to you."


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Thank you so much for all the reviews for this one, I'm so glad you liked it. Sorry this wasn't up sooner, but I've been working on other stories, but this is the conclusion to the story so I hope that you enjoy it and leave a review. :)

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She looks at him. She can't help but look at him, standing in the doorway. It's funny how moments feel longer than they were. She knew they weren't. Every moment was the same as the next, same as the one before, but there are some that seem to elongate themselves, stretch themselves beyond their limits and where words were just formed by her lips now silence was formed by the universe. His hand is still poised to knock and it hangs there, like a strange ornament. His hair looks disheveled, like he had been running or jogging, perhaps to this very door.

Her mind flips itself over and over again, analyzing, denying the analysis, flipping itself over again and then starting the process over. She fears, she knows that much, she fears and with affairs come fears. It's a constant fear, that's what an affair is because there's too many outside factors. In an affair there are never just two people, it's never her and him, it's her, him, Jessica, Paul, Ash, Cheyenne, Sierra, Aurora, Murphy, her father, his father, her mother, and the list goes on and on because they are never alone, not really, not ever. Their lives loom above them and it scares her, she's scared because it will never be just them.

She thinks of the possible scenarios, the likely ones, the ones that send him here. One thought she thinks is Jessica has found out. Careful only takes you so far, careful only last until the second you screw up and then careful is out the window and sloppy has taken over. Were they sloppy? Was she sloppy? Did she leave something with him besides her love? She can't think and it's bothering her and she doesn't want Jessica to know, she doesn't want Jessica's wrath, yes, she wanted Jessica's husband, but she doesn't want the confrontation because he loves Jessica and uses her, yes, she's used, she must be. He doesn't feel what she feels. He leaves in the morning and he kisses her shoulder, yes, but it must be payment for the night before.

Jessica's found out, she's sure of it and he's mad, he's going to rail and yell and tell her that it's her fault, that she lured him, seduced him and she will fall, oh she will fall hard and there will be no net to bounce her to her feet. He'll blame her, he'll blame her and she'll see what she doesn't want to see when he wakes up and leaves. She'll see the guilt in his eyes at what he's done and she doesn't want to see that, she fears that maybe most of all because she's let herself fall, but has he? She doesn't think he has, she thinks he kisses her and then leaves and doesn't think about her until he needs his fix.

Or worse yet, Paul's found out. Paul has found out somehow, he's spied, he's seen that she isn't alone, he snuck into their room one night, caught them and has been biding his time. Chris is here to hide and she must hide him and incur Paul's rage. He'll yell at her, he'll divorce her, he'll take her daughter's away. He'll tell her parents and they'll be so disappointed and they'll fire Chris and then, once again, she will fall. She'll have nothing in that scenario and her mind quickly pushes it away. No, Paul couldn't have found out, he'd be here by now, he'd be slamming Chris into the wall by now and Chris is not wincing, he's okay.

Perhaps the worst of all is that he's found someone else. She was merely a placeholder in his life and he has found a new person, a new woman whose back he won't trace his finger down and kiss their shoulder and most importantly, most significantly, he won't leave her. He'll lie there until she wakes up, until her eyes open and he'll smile and kiss her properly and in this scenario she will fall the hardest because at the very least, if someone has found out about them, she can pretend like he loved her once, like she meant something to him at one time, but if there's someone else, if that's what he's come here to tell her, she will fall and she will not pick herself back up again.

And all this in the matter of moments and he stands there and he looks at her and she can't look at him because if she looks at him, maybe she'll see the answer and if she sees the answer, she might push him back out, tell him she's tired and push and push until he's gone and she can cry and she hates crying. She hates crying because it feels like giving up and she doesn't want to give up, but she may not have any choice. She knows that she has things, she has people, but it's not right. Her daughters are the true loves of her life, but if she is broken from something else, something totally unrelated to the unconditional love of her daughters, how can she mend it when their love is something separate than the kind she so desperately wants from Chris?

"Can I come in?" he asks and she's not sure. How many nights has she sat there waiting, telling herself that when the moment came, when he knocked on her door for another evening, she would send him away, tell him this was it and she would close the door forever? Too many, every night, really. Yet, here he was, asking to come in and part of her wanted to say no, to banish him, but the other part, the one that always won, opened it further and allowed him entrance.

He doesn't look eager to sleep with her and it worries her even more, the thoughts racing around like cars on a track. Usually he has that look in his eye, the one where she knows that he wants her and it's not there and it's like maybe it's been extinguished and she's wasting her time sitting there when she could be crying or sobbing or lashing out and trashing her hotel room, except she knows that's not going to happen because her personality isn't like that, it's not full of rage or unending sadness. Maybe she'll just whimper and sleep until sleep can no longer hold off the heartbreak.

She doesn't know what to expect or what's to come, but she doesn't think she wants either and he's not talking and he said they needed to talk, but maybe talk meant he needed to just say the words that would end it. Did he find someone else? That was it, wasn't it, it was it and she'd have to live with seeing them just like she lived with seeing him and Jessica right now. She pictured new women in this daydream. Jessica would be replaced and she'd still have to look on and pretend and she shouldn't because she _had_ a husband and she thinks he loves her, but doesn't love him like she should and she's awful for that. She's awful because her heart is breaking for a man that isn't really _hers_ and doesn't even want to be hers because he leaves and he doesn't know she loves him.

"You wanted to talk," and she squeaks, she actually _squeaks _the words out. What is wrong with her? She knows what's wrong with her though and it's the fact that Chris takes her words. He takes them and she never has any meaningful words for him. Thoughts, oh yes, she has those in abundance, but she never has the words. Her mouth opens and she can't speak and it's stupid and he probably thinks her dumb and she wishes she could push the words out, but she can't and it's frustrating, but it's her life and she can't change overnight, though she wishes to because she would give him so many words he would've drowned in them.

"Yeah, I did, I'm sorry I'm here so late," he tells her and she's surprised at his apology. Why should she be though? He's a good guy, he apologizes, he gets sorry at things. Sometimes, she'll get a look on her face and he'll ask if he's hurting her, if he's too rough and she's not, she's just so overwhelmed by him that she feels overcome and it shows on her face.

"It's okay," she said and she reaches out tentatively because she figures, with the apology, he still wants sex tonight. He's apologizing because he thinks that if he doesn't, she won't give in, won't let her body be his until the morning, but she will. She shouldn't put up with it, but she will, she'll let it happen because it's better than never feeling his finger sliding down her back in the morning and without that touch, without that soft feeling, what does she have but a life she doesn't feel like she should be leading?

She gets to his buttons before he stops her and pulls her hands away and now she really knows. It's over and he's come to tell her. He apologized because it's over and he pities her and he's always pitied her and now it's too much for him and he doesn't care if she'll fall and she's sure he has his reasons all lined up and he's going to recite them and she'll nod and accept it because she has no choice but to accept it. She hates when he leaves in the morning, but she accepts it. She doesn't want him to ever leave, but she'll accept it, because what other choice does she really have? There are no choices, just acceptance.

"You…don't," she looks to the bed, words fail her again. Damn words, stuck in her throat as they are.

"Um, not right now," he says to her and she nods like it's fine with her, but if there is no sex, there's no them because that's what they have and she keeps nodding and nodding until it slows to her head looking down as she's all nodded out.

"Okay."

"I needed to talk to you, seriously, really needed to talk to you."

You almost laugh because it seems like he has an abundance of words. He's rambling and she wishes she could steal some of them, just take them right from his mouth and put them in her own mouth and say the words she wants to say. Together they could form a conversation, him with too many and her with too little and both with just enough. If he says it's over, will she speak, will the words finally come?

"Okay." Still no words, no words are coming. Say more, say _something_. "Is it…serious?" She wants to ask if it's about them, but she can't find the right way to say it without looking like she wants more because to have an us, there has to be more than sex and a finger running down her back in the morning and a kiss to her shoulder.

"Yeah, I think it is serious."

"Is it about you and me?" There she's rephrased it and it implies nothing, it's him and it's her and it's not them. There is no them, just him and her and they come together sometimes and she loves it and loves him, but they are not a them. They are not good enough for the plural. They are just two singulars who sometimes come together, never a plural.

"Yeah, it is," he says and stop drawing out, she pleads and he looks nervous.

"You're going?" she ventures to ask and he looks at her like he doesn't know what the two words mean. They're too few, but where can she find more, open his mouth and she could find the words.

"I'm not going anywhere," he tells her and she doesn't know how to take that.

"What?"

"Look, I know we don't talk a lot. I mean, I talk, we do talk, but never about the other stuff, the stuff between us and there is something between us," he says and she looked at him like he's speaking in foreign tongue, but his words are plain. "But I've been thinking, thinking a lot…"

"You want to end this?" There's her voice. Fear, the great instigator. She fears the words that will come out of his mouth so if she intercepts them first and twists them in her own way it won't hurt so much. Oh, sure, it'll still hurt, but it'll hurt on her terms.

He looks at her and asks back, "Do you?"

"We have families."

"We do," he agrees.

"We have lives."

"We do."

'This is…"

"What is…"

She doesn't know. She knows what she wants this to be, but she doesn't know what it actually is because they don't talk. He finally shakes his head. "Okay, look, here it is. I'm in love with you. I've been in love with you for a while, but you never let me talk, you don't want to talk about us. You always kiss me and then we have sex and fine, it's all well and good and you must be like the soundest sleeper on the planet because you _never_ wake up in the mornings and I'm always trying to wake you up and you never do and I have woken up so many mornings just wanting to tell you I loved you, I loved what we are together, but you're asleep and I can't do it anymore. I can't not tell you. I love you, okay, I love you."

Too many words, shooting at her and she doesn't know how to respond because he…feels the same way. He feels the same way and she doesn't know. The words are completely gone now and she launches herself at him and kisses him and lets her tongue speak in his mouth as he kisses her back feverishly and she loves him too and can he tell, she hopes he can tell, but maybe he needs the words too.

"I love you," she croaks out, words still lingering solely on her tongue and not as sound from her mouth. He looks surprised and you realize while you've been together, you've been together in parallel. You should've let some of the words through because the words are important. "I thought…"

"What did you think?"

"Your finger, when it would go down my spine, when you'd climb in bed, when you'd kiss my shoulder, I thought it was a thank you, I didn't know, I pretended to sleep. I love you, I thought you didn't love me back."

Words are getting easier to coax out of her mouth and she loves them now because they taste like sweet sugar on her tongue and Chris is here and he loves her and he kisses her because he loves her and he touches her because he loves her and God help him, he climbs into bed because he needs that one more moment with her and she finally _understands_ what this was all about and she gets _it_ and she's clear for the first time.

"I do love you," he said.

"I love you," and she can't say it enough. She wants to stay here, but…but what of the morning. She hates when he leaves, all the time she hates when he leaves, what will she do now? She loves him and doesn't want him to leave so what will she do? "Don't leave tomorrow."

"I won't," he tells her and for the first morning in a long while there will be no finger brushing her spine, no kiss on her shoulder, there will be holding, but then, after the holding, then what? What happens then? She is not familiar with this routine and she doesn't know what to expect and she should know what to expect by now, but she doesn't.

"What about Jessica?" She still lingers in the air.

"I left her, for you," he said, "if you'll have me."

She'll leave Hunter, she knows it. She'll leave him without regret and one day in the near future, she will formally meet Chris's children and he will formally meet hers and they were have a nice day together and she will feel happy, but right at this moment she feels a different kind of happy so they let the talking cease and their bodies start to move and speak and dance and vibrate and the words shared here are deeper and intimate.

And in the morning, he holds her tight.

And she doesn't have to pretend like she doesn't hate it when he leaves, because this morning…

He stays.

**THE END**


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